


The Naming of Cats Is a Difficult Matter

by the_original_n_chan



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Canon Universe, Gen, Generic Continuity, Humor, probably splits off somewhere in season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-25
Updated: 2017-10-25
Packaged: 2019-01-23 00:50:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12494688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_original_n_chan/pseuds/the_original_n_chan
Summary: ...especially when the cat has ideas of its own.





	The Naming of Cats Is a Difficult Matter

Sighing, Pidge leaned way back in her chair, stretching her arms high above her head, fingers laced. The parameters were set, and now there was nothing to do but let the computer chew through the data. If she were lucky, they’d have narrowed their search for the Zhivaan home world to a handful of likely coordinates by morning. Which seemed like forever away.

With a grunt, she released the stretch and flopped further backward, letting her head hang over the back of the seat and her arms dangle limply. What to do now? There were no new leads on her Dad-and-Matt quest; going over the old information again would just be crazymaking, like chasing her own tail, if she had a tail, which she didn’t, but if there was nothing else to work on.... 

_Go to sleep, Katie_ , her mother’s voice murmured in her head, and she scrunched her eyes shut with an _mmph_ of protest.

She didn’t have the strength for the Altean language program. She could continue reading up on the morphic technology that adjusted the paladin armor and bayards to their owners, because that was really cool and she could think of some great applications for it, but it meant getting deep into quintessence mechanics, which still gave her a headache. Not the existence of a quasi magicospiritual energy, which she’d finally come to accept, but the practical aspects of working with it, how it was—captured? channeled?— _used_ to actually _do_ things. Maybe she could tinker with the scanner she was trying to adapt in order to quantify and analyze it.

As her thoughts bounced from one idea to the next, she became aware of a whisper of presence, watchful but not guarded—more like interested. She leaned just a little farther back so she could look up and across the hangar at her lion, that giant face upside down from her current vantage point. “Oh, hey, Green. What’s up?” There was no response, but that sense of attention lingered. It wasn’t the first time she’d felt it—it had been near constant in the trash nebula, while she’d been constructing her transmitter, not as strong and clear as the _push_ when the lion wanted her to do something in battle, but threading quietly through her mind, observing her work, part support and part curiosity.

“Are you bored?” Pidge wondered. “Do magical space lions _get_ bored? Or are you like cats, and you just sleep most of the time.” It would be super cool if she could actually have a non-one-sided conversation with her lion; think of how much she could learn. They could work on projects together! Also, they could make fun of Lance when he got obnoxious. Gazing up at her lion’s unlit, unblinking eyes, she sighed.

“I wonder if I should give you a name,” she mused, somewhat randomly. She’d always humanized the robots she built by giving them names—not that the Green Lion needed humanizing (or was anything so simple as a robot), but it was a habit. “I mean, I know you’re already ‘Green,’ but...something more personal. Something that’s not _just_ a color.” Lance had taken to calling his lion Lady Blue, and she had definitely heard Keith addressing Red as Kitty. “What did your previous paladin call you?” No answer, but she could swear she felt a sharpening of interest, something like anticipation, even eagerness, and her heart beat a little faster—she wasn’t 100 percent sure whether the excitement was her own or someone else’s. The feeling was weird but cool, and she grinned. 

“Huh. So I guess you’re into the idea. Okay. Uh...hmm.” Her mind was traitorously going blank on typical cat names. And also on lions. Ugh. “Maybe...something naturey,” she mumbled. She could think of a reasonable number of flowers, but flowers weren’t green. “Something green—” 

Startled, she drew in a breath. That touch on her mind had changed again, and it felt like...the closest she could come to describing it was like the fluttering pages of a book, except her memories were the pages, flickering by, moments, feelings, too quick to grasp—until at last they settled, falling still on a single, very distinct image.

“ _What_.” 

She tried to push that thought away, but it persisted, popping back into the forefront of her mind with what she could swear was a cheerful insistence. Jerking upright, she spun her chair around to face the lion. “Oh no. _No way_.” The lion’s face was as impassive as always, so she had to be imagining that it looked smug. “Green, _no_.”

If there had been words to the lion’s mental response, they would probably have been, _Green, yes!_

“ _Argh!_ ” Indignation launched her out of her seat, her arms flailing. “Absolutely not! Do you know how...how completely _ridiculous_ that would sound?” She struck a dramatic pose. “Behold the Green Paladin of Voltron and her mighty lion— _Peas!_ ” Somebody apparently thought this was just fine, and Pidge glared, making an X with her arms. “ _Not_ okay! I veto this one. Pick something else.” That self-satisfied silence was unmoved; she might as well be trying to physically push the lion’s enormous bulk for all the effect she was having, and she found herself starting to despair. How had something as seemingly uncomplicated as naming her lion gone so completely off the rails? “Green, _come on!_ Look, can’t we be reasonable about this?”

“Uh, Pidge?” She jumped and glanced over her shoulder. Hunk was leaning heavily against the door frame, his eyes squinched and bleary. “Shiro sent me down here to make sure you go to bed.” He yawned hugely. “Permission granted to pick you up and carry you, but I’d kind of rather not, since I’m already half asleep on my feet, so can we just skip that part and you come along quietly?”

Pidge heaved a sigh. She might as well—she wasn’t going to get any more work done at this point, not with her concentration shattered and her frustration running high. “Coming,” she grumbled. As Hunk shambled off, she backed toward the doorway, jabbing a finger in the direction of her lion. “We’re not done with this conversation,” she told it, her eyes narrowed, then spun on her heel and stomped out of the hangar.

Despite having the last word, she didn’t feel at all like she’d won.

 

“So hey, Pidge.” She glanced up from her pancakes (which were kind of orange, and the approximately chocolate chips were purplish, but despite the weird colors they were actually really good) to meet Hunk’s smiling gaze. He wasn’t exactly a morning person, but he looked far more awake than he’d been the night before. “What was that all about last night? How come you were yelling at your lion?”

“Er.” She cringed, looking down and away. Why did this have to come up at breakfast, when _everybody_ was there? “Nothing. It’s not anything important, anyway.”

“You’re not having troubles with the Green Lion, are you?” Allura sounded concerned, and Pidge quickly shook her head.

“Oh no, it’s nothing like that! We were just having a little...disagreement.” Her words were met with a curious, waiting silence, and she sighed, her shoulders slumping. Apparently she wasn’t going to get out of this. “So...I was trying to come up with a name for her, and—” 

“Oh, cool!” Lance interrupted, grinning at her from across the table. “Did you decide yet? ’Cause I think it should be something totally metal. Like Green Phantom. Or Green Lightning!”

Keith squinted at him. “Wasn’t Green Lightning a comic book character?”

“Excuse you—that was the Green Lantern,” Lance sniffed. “Besides what’s wrong with naming your lion after a superhero? Green Lantern defends the universe too, y’know.”

Keith snorted, turning back to his breakfast. “Nerd.”

“Un-nerd!”

“Hey—”

“So what _did_ you come up with?” Shiro asked, calm and focused as always, and there went any hope of having everyone forget what they were talking about, distracted by a typical Lance-and-Keith argument.

“Well...I didn’t actually pick it,” she started. “Green did—I was trying to think of green things, and I guess she must’ve pulled it out of my head. Because this is totally not what I would have chosen! And I still haven’t agreed to it!”

“C’mon, dude, you’re keeping us all in suspense,” Hunk broke in, half laughing. “Just spit it out already.”

She let out a low huff of breath, resigning herself to her fate.

“...Peas,” she muttered.

There was an instant’s hush, that moment of staring down the barrel of a blaster before a finger moved on the trigger, the weightlessness at the peak of a loop, before the swoop and dive.

And then the silence was broken by Lance and Hunk exploding into shrieking howls of laughter. Hunk actually had to put down the serving platter he was holding and lean on the back of Lance’s chair to keep himself upright.

Bristling, she jumped to her feet. “I _said_ it’s not my idea!”

“Omigod. Oh, man,” Hunk gasped, wiping tears from his eyes. “I think I... _peed_ myself.” And he and Lance went off again. 

“I don’t see what’s so funny.” Allura’s frost-laced voice warmed as she turned toward Pidge. “I think Peace is a lovely name.”

“Erm...it’s not ‘Peace.’ “ Pidge shifted awkwardly, but honesty compelled her. “It’s ‘Peas.’ ”

Allura blinked. “What is a ‘peez’?”

“Oh, I know!” Coran announced. “It’s a ceremonial title used by the Ygrat people of the Bervipilis system. There was this one time when the Great Peez of—”

“No,” Pidge broke in quickly, before he could really get going on his tangent, “it’s a plural. ‘Peas.’ A pea is...a kind of vegetable.”

Hunk solemnly held up a finger. “Actually, peas are a legume.”

“So does that mean they’re a _leg_? Like _you_ and _me_?” Lance elbowed Hunk in the side. “Eh? Eh?” Hunk had to pause for a moment before it clicked, and then the two of them collapsed against each other, cackling like maniacs.

If only her arms were long enough to reach across the table and strangle them....

Shiro had come to stand next to her; his hand settled on her shoulder, a gentle, steadying weight. “Your dad always loved to joke about those freeze-dried space peas, huh?” he murmured. She could hear the fondness in his voice.

And her heart caught—the memory of that last meal with her whole family, the banter, the warmth, her father’s loving pride in her. The loss, as sharp as the edge of crystal, and the determination to never, ever give up her search. So much emotion keyed to a single instant of time. So much fierceness. So much love.

In spite of herself, a tiny smile crept over her face. “Yeah,” she answered Shiro, just as quietly. “He really did.” The laughter had ebbed, and she realized with a start that everyone was probably watching her having a moment, which was kind of embarrassing. She cleared her throat and went on, a little more loudly, “Well...all things considered, I guess it’s not _so_ bad. Just as a private nickname,” she added hastily, “not for the general public or anything like that.” She was _not_ giving Lance and Hunk a license to make a big thing out of this in front of the entire universe. Even if very nearly the entire universe had no idea what peas even were.

Hunk must have circled the table at some point, because suddenly he was there, flinging an arm around her shoulders and squishing her into an affectionate but slightly overpowering side hug. “Yeah, Pidge,” he snickered. “Give _Peas_ a chance.”

If she killed him, he’d never complete his experiments into creating an acceptable imitation of peanut butter. Also, there was Voltron to consider. She’d have to bide her time and plan a more subtle and less fatal revenge. 

And in the meantime they had a war to fight and an empire to overcome, and somewhere in the midst of it all she was _going_ to find her family, and when she introduced her dad and Matt to her lion, they were going to be amazed. 

(And they’d all get a good laugh out of the name.)

 _Did you know?_ she wondered, trying to cast her thoughts all the way across the ship to the Green Lion’s hangar. _Did you know what that word would mean to me?_ And she thought she might have felt an answering brush against her mind, a lingering affirmation, faint and far away.

**Author's Note:**

> Believe it or not, this was originally going to be part of a huge Klance/polydins psychic bonding alternate universe thing, but at this point I'm doubtful that I'm ever going to finish that beast, and this idea was cute and stands on its own perfectly well, so here you go. Hope you enjoyed it! 
> 
> Btw, in case you were wondering what would have happened if Shiro hadn't interrupted, Keith was about to say that just because he'd called Lance a nerd, it didn't mean that he wasn't also a nerd, at which point Lance would have declared himself infinitely and forever more of a nerd than Keith and challenged him to an epic nerd-off, and at this point I just have to put my head down on the table and sigh. (I'm not ever going to actually write this idea, but if someone else wants to take it up, feel free.)


End file.
